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Government Claims for Clean-Up Costs Related to Cold-War-Era Contracts Rebuffed

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 10.10.12

On September 30, a federal court dismissed the government's claims for clean-up costs associated with groundwater contamination resulting from Cold-War-era Air Force contracts for certain rockets. Dismissal of the government's claims, which alleged perchlorate and trichloroethylene contamination, was based in part on "hold harmless" language in Air Force facilities contracts and continues the trend of recent decisions in cases involving the government's obligation to pay for environmental remediation costs stemming from work performed under government contracts.


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Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.20.25

Design Patent Application Drawings & Prosecution History Must Be Clear (Merely Translucent Won’t Suffice!)

Design patents offer protection for the ornamental appearance of a product, focusing on aspects like its shape and surface decoration, as opposed to the functional aspects protected by utility patents. The scope of a design patent is defined by the drawings and any descriptive language within the patent itself. Recent decisions by the Federal Circuit emphasize the need for clarity in the prosecution history of a design patent in order to preserve desired scope to preserve intentional narrowing (and to avoid unintentional sacrifice of desired claim scope)....